Network Administration: The pathping Command

pathping is an interesting command that’s unique to Windows. It’s sort of a cross between the ping command and the tracert command, combining the features of both into one tool.

When you run pathping, it first traces the route to the destination address much the way tracert does. Then, it launches into a 25-second test of each router along the way, gathering statistics on the rate of data loss to each hop.

If the route has a lot of hops, this can take a long time. However, it can help you to spot potentially unreliable hops. If you’re having intermittent trouble reaching a particular destination, using pathping may help you pinpoint the problem.

The following command output is typical of the pathping command. (Using an -n switch causes the display to use numeric IP numbers only, instead of DNS host names. Although fully qualified host names are convenient, they tend to be very long for network routers, which makes the pathping output very difficult to decipher.)